Posted by Dondi on 9, 2000 at 1:15 PM:
I have been following various discussion on building a MAME machine. I decided to go with the Happ Controls USB Game Controller Interface for Win98. With a processor powerful enough, USB seems the way to go. I hooked up 4 joysticks with at least 6 buttons to each joystick, a trackball, a spinner, a steering wheel and a Digital/Analog joystick for those "twisty" games. I have encountered ZERO problems with this set-up and can't believe how well it came out for only 2 weekends of work. 1 weekend for initail wiring set-up and one weekend for the contruction of the cabinet. The machine runs on a barebones system from Desertdevils.com (a 400 MHz Celeron, 128Mb RAM, 10.5 Gb HD and LAN, 8Mb AGP video, modem, 2 USB ports all integrated on the motherboard).
Please check it out and tell me what you think. I must also acknowledge Jim Dziagwa (Technical Director at Happ Controls) for answering many of my pre-purchase questions in fear that it wasn't possible to pull off post-purchase. Anyway, look for future updates to my web site where I will post a step-by-step site on how I pulled this project off with absolutely NO problems or headaches.
-- Dondi